What if your daughter were kidnapped? Well, that's Hollywood

By Lawrie ZionMay 25 2002

Director Phillip Noyce has defended a controversial campaign to launch his film Rabbit-Proof Fence to a global audience.

The film, to be released in Britain in August and the United States in October, will be promoted by US distributor Miramax with a poster that contains the slogan: "What if the government kidnapped your daughter?" followed by the line "It happened every week in Australia from 1905 to 1971."

Speaking to The Age from Los Angeles, Noyce said he was "horrified" when he first heard about the campaign. "I thought they were turning it into a political expose which everyone in Australia has been saying that we should avoid at all costs," he said.

"Now the poster has become bigger than the movie. I have people calling me from England, Italy and the US."

A spokeswoman for Multicultural Affairs Minister Gary Hardgrave said the sensationalist way a serious subject was being promoted in the US was disappointing.");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

"It is important for American audiences not to judge Australia by past practices, which though well-intentioned in some cases, were wrong."

Noyce, commenting on the wording of the poster, says "the interesting thing about it is that they've called a spade a spade. They've just said children were kidnapped. Miramax say they have (done research) and that the mechanism of removing children from their families was operating every week during those times.

"According to this research, even if a child wasn't taken every week, the system was still working at tracking families and I suppose that that is a valid position to argue from."

One of the other contentious issues from a marketing perspective is that there are no images of people on the poster - a fact that Noyce argues goes against traditional publicity approaches.

"But maybe the idea that a government would kidnap a child is challenging enough to capture the public's imagination - and when you think about it that's what happened.

"This was not my idea, by the way. When I saw the poster I just sat there opened-mouthed and said, 'Why are you making it a political film? It's a story of courage and determination and ties that bind that just happens to be set in Oz in 1931'."

But Noyce confesses that he is amused by all of the controversy, and argues that the Australian Government has no grounds for getting upset about the proposed campaign.

"They're asking me to apologise for their poster. Maybe they could apologise to our indigenous citizens." he says.